Mandya: Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, on Tuesday, October 16, inaugurated the popular annual three-day Srirangapatna Dasara, in the presence of Ministers C S Puttaraju and Sa Ra Mahesh and local MLA Ravindra Srikantaiah.
The CM offered flowers to the deity Chamundeshwari near the Wessely Bridge on the Bengaluru-Mysuru Highway.
The Dasara elephant carrying the wooden howdah, accompanied by the Varalakshmi and Cauvery elephants, was the main attraction of the event. There were 30 cultural troupes who were also part of the procession.
Srirangapatna is the place of origin of the Dasara festivities. They were first celebrated by Raja Wadiyar I, as the ‘Victory Parade’ after he conquered the area in 1610.
As Srirangapatna was the capital of the Kingdom of Mysuru back then, Dasara was celebrated here. The celebrations were then moved to Mysuru in 1799 after the death of Tipu Sultan, but the tradition of celebrating the Srirangapatna Dasara was kept alive, although not with as much pomp as before. Although this tradition died out later, it was revived by the district administration in 2007.
